1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of systems with hot swappable components.
2. Prior Art and Related Art
In many applications it is necessary to have a system which remains in operation even when under repair. For instance, a server in a network may have boards or blades in a standby mode or with excess capacity. When a blade is detected as having failed, other blades that were in a stand-by mode take over while the failed blade is replaced. Alternatively, blades with excess capacity are used to pick-up the tasks of the failed blade while it is replaced. Generally, an alarm or other indication is given to an operator indicating that a failure has occurred. The operator is then able to remove the failed blade and reinsert a good blade. One of the major problems in these systems is the management of power as these changes occur.
Often in such systems connectors are used having pins of different lengths which cooperatively engage sockets. For instance, a backplane in a server may have a plurality of connectors, each for receiving a blade where the pins in the connectors are of different lengths. These pins are used for instance, to allow discharge of static electricity as well as other functions.